Skier Woolstencroft wins sixth career Paralympic gold

Lauren Woolstencroft of Canada celebrates her second gold medal of the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games at Whistler on Wednesday.

Photograph by: Mark van Manen
, PNG

WHISTLER, B.C. — Winning gold medals is an unusual profession by anyone’s standards, but for Lauren Woolstencroft it’s become business as usual.

After crossing the finish line with her third gold of the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games Woolstencroft gave only a mild pump of her arm to celebrate her downhill victory (women’s standing category) Thursday at Whistler Creekside. She did so, the skier explained, because there were still other racers on course, and she didn’t want to celebrate prematurely, plus, there are two more races ahead in her quest for a five-repeat. But mostly, Miss Unstoppable admits, she’s just being Lauren. The 28-year-old from North Vancouver, B.C., is an electrical engineering by training, but emotionally, electric isn’t a word that fits exactly.

“I’m not a really showy person,” Woolstencroft, who has eight career Paralympic medals, including six golds, admits. “I’m excited. Perhaps I should show it more. Sometimes I look as if I’m in control when I’m skiing, but I’m really on the edge. I’m really that way in the finish area, too. It’s awesome. But I don’t think it’s set in yet.”

Undemonstrably and routinely, Woolstencroft is picking up where Team Canada left off in the second week of the 2010 Winter Olympics last month. You remember that time? A week of dismal early performances, especially by medal favourites and the Canadian alpine skiers in particular, was followed by a week in which Canadian athletes won medals by the bushelful. When the pressure was on, they got in the right headspace, and Woolstencroft has yet to crumble from some of those same expectations.

“The downhill course was extremely hard today,” said silver medallist Solene Jambaque of France, who was 4.40 seconds behind the Canadian’s factored winning time. “Woolstencroft did a perfect descent, flawless. We’re trying to be realistic. She can win five gold. We have to be content with silver and bronze. On one hand, she’s got the advantage of skiing in Whistler, on her home turf. On the other, she has all this pressure on her. But I guess, when you’re among friends, it gives you wings.”

Woolstencroft, 28, came into these Games as the Lindsay Vonn of Canadian Paralympic skiing. Vonn, an American, got a lot of hype and play in the print and electronic media, but in the end she finished with just one medal — a gold — when many more were expected.

“There is a lot of pressure on us, for sure,” Woolstencroft says. “For me, I try to use that pressure to my advantage. Everybody is cheering for us because we’re Canadian and we compete for the national team. It’s great to come down and have your people at the bottom, for sure. The atmosphere does put butterflies in your stomach. People are expecting big things. That kind of motivates me to get down faster.”

Her gold is the sixth of her Paralympic Games career. Woolstencroft has two other medals, both silvers, giving her a total of eight and moving her past teammate Karolina Wizniewska into first place on the all-time Canadian list for Paralympic Games skiing. Wizniewska, who has four silvers and three bronze medals, finished fifth in Thursday’s race, just .24 seconds from a bronze.

Meanwhile, Viviane Forest of Edmonton, a visually impaired skier on a self-styled Own the Podium program, continued her heartwarming personal story by winning her first Paralympic Winter Games gold medal in her downhill event.

Forest has been fighting through the pain of a groin pull which mocked her dizzying ambition to finish on the podium in every one of five alpine events. She picked up a silver in Monday’s slalom race and a bronze in Tuesday’s giant slalom, a medal, she admitted, that “feels like gold” because of the added physical adversity she has had to endure.

On Thursday, however, her gold was the real McCoy. The 30-year-old skier, originally from Montreal, finished 0.66 seconds ahead of silver medallist Henrieta Farkasova of Slovakia in the field of 10 racers.

“I promised the Canadian people I would win at least one gold, and now I have it,” Forest said. “I’m even more pleased because it’s in the downhill. It means so much. It’s such a difficult course here. My groin’s still pretty sore. They had the doctors and the physios working on me (Wednesday) to recover. Still, I had some tears this morning, because I was not sure I would be able to do it. It’s a bit crazy, but I’m finding the strength somewhere.”

Forest won gold at the 2000 and 2004 Paralympic Summer Games in the sport of goalball, a three-on-three game for visually impaired athletes. But after suffering a series of concussions, she switched to skiing, starting four years ago on the bunny hills and working her way quickly to the IPC World Cup level.

Lindsay Debou of Whistler, Forest’s guide, has been working with the skier for the past two seasons.

“I feel like we’re doing it together,” Forest says. “It’s like synchro (swimming). On Tuesday (giant slalom), Lindsay kept yelling at me to keep going. I listened to her to block out the pain. And I kept going down, like a robot. All my attention is focused on her. She’s like a dot that moves.”

Forest’s acuity is compromised by albinism and retinitis pigmentosa which limits her scope to four per cent of normal vision. But even with limited sight, her ambition remains boundless. Like Woolstencroft, she is aiming to finish on the podium five times in five races, a mountain of expectation she now seems capable of climbing.

Lauren Woolstencroft of Canada celebrates her second gold medal of the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games at Whistler on Wednesday.

Photograph by: Mark van Manen, PNG

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